[113] Plutarch, Dion, c. 3. The age of the younger Dionysius is nowhere positively specified. But in the year 356 B. C.—or 355 B. C., at the latest—he had a son, Apollokratês, old enough to be entrusted with the command of Ortygia, when he himself evacuated it for the first time (Plutarch, Dion, c. 37). We cannot suppose Apollokratês to have been less than sixteen years of age at the moment when he was entrusted with such a function, having his mother and sisters under his charge (c. 50). Apollokratês therefore must have been born at least as early as 372 B. C.; perhaps even earlier. Suppose Dionysius the younger to have been twenty years of age when Apollokratês was born; he would thus be in his twenty-fifth year in the beginning of 367 B. C., when Dionysius the elder died. The expressions of Plato, as to the youth of Dionysius the younger at that juncture, are not unsuitable to such an age.
[114] Aristotel. Polit. v. 5, 6.
[115] Plato Epistol. vii. p. 347 A. Compare the offer of Dion to maintain fifty triremes at his own expense (Plutarch, Dion, c. 6.)
[116] Dion was fifty-five years of age at the time of his death, in the fourth year after his departure from Peloponnesus (Cornelius Nepos, Dion, c. 10).
His death took place seemingly about 354 B. C. He would thus be born about 408 B. C.
[117] Plato, Epistol. vii. p. 326 D. ἐλθόντα δέ με ὁ ταύτῃ λεγόμενος αὖ βίος εὐδαίμων, Ἰταλιωτικῶν τε καὶ Συρακουσίων τραπεζῶν πλήρης, οὐδαμῆ οὐδαμῶς ἤρεσκε, δίς τε τῆς ἡμέρας ἐμπιμπλάμενον ζῇν καὶ μηδέποτε κοιμώμενον μόνον νύκτωρ, etc.
[118] Cicero, De Finibus, v. 20; De Republic. i. 10. Jamblichus (Vit. Pythagoræ, c. 199) calls Dion a member of the Pythagorean brotherhood, which may be doubted; but his assertion that Dion procured for Plato, though only by means of a large price (one hundred minæ), the possession of a book composed by the Pythagorean Philolaus, seems not improbable. The ancient Pythagoreans wrote nothing. Philolaus (seemingly about contemporary with Sokrates) was the first Pythagorean who left any written memorial. That this book could only be obtained by the intervention of an influential Syracusan—and even by him only for a large price—is easy to believe.
See the instructive Dissertation of Gruppe, Ueber die Fragmente des Archytas und der älteren Pythagoreer, p. 24, 26, 48, etc.
[119] See a remarkable passage, Plato, Epist. vii p. 328 F.
[120] Plato, Epistol. vii. p. 335 F. Δίωνα γὰρ ἐγὼ σαφῶς οἶδα, ὡς οἷόν τε περὶ ἀνθρώπων ἄνθρωπον διϊσχυρίζεσθαι, ὅτι τὴν ἀρχὴν εἰ κατέσχεν, ὡς οὐκ ἄν ποτε ἐπ᾽ ἄλλο γε σχῆμα τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐτράπετο, ἢ ἐπὶ τὸ—Συρακούσας μὲν πρῶτον, τὴν πατρίδα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ, ἐπεὶ τὴν δουλείαν αὐτῆς ἀπήλλαξε καὶ φαιδρύνας ἐλευθερίῳ ἐν σχήματι κατέστησε, τὸ μετὰ τοῦτ᾽ ἂν πάσῃ μηχάνῃ ἐκόσμησε νόμοις τοῖς προσήκουσί τε καὶ ἀρίστοις τοὺς πολίτας—τό τε ἐφεξῆς τούτοις προυθυμεῖτ᾽ ἂν πρᾶξαι, πᾶσαν Σικελίαν κατοικίζειν καὶ ἐλευθέραν ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων ποιεῖν, τοὺς μὲν ἐκβάλλων, τοὺς δὲ χειρούμενος ῥᾷον Ἱέρωνος, etc.